As understood by one skilled in the art, set top boxes (STBs) are used by households to receive cable television from a multi-service operator (MSO), such as a cable television provider. Typically, a cable television provider provides programming content to the STBs over, for example, coaxial cable. From time to time, it becomes necessary or desirable to provide modifications or upgrades to the programming code that is installed in the STBs that are deployed at various locations throughout a region serviced by the MSO. The downloading of code is typically accomplished by having the MSO request a new code download to the remote project team (RPT) group. Each digital access controller (DAC) site within the MSO's region of service has various STB types to support its many customers, and each STB type requires multiple code objects to be downloaded. The RPT group thus will manually ensure that all code object types and versions are compatible with the STB types at each DAC site.
The RPT group will then order the numerous object files using a Digital Configuration Management (digital CM) site for the many different DAC sites owned by the MSO. Software can also be ordered directly by the MSO from the digital CM site via the Internet, but this is not typical. The software can be distributed to the DAC site using any suitable technique, such as file transfer protocol (FTP), or via compact disc (CD) or e-mail, for example.
That is, to distribute the software, the RPT group manually connects to the DAC site of interest and load software onto DAC site. The RPT group then, via the DAC, creates new source code, creates and associates decoder conditionals, creates new services, removes current code assignments, removes old code suite components, loads new code suite components, and builds new code assignments. The RPT can then provide these codes, etc., as test codes to each STB. If the test codes are determined to operate correctly, these test codes can be used as the updated codes by the STBs.
As can be appreciated by one skilled in the art, these steps are redundant for most DAC sites, and are typically time consuming and considered prone to error because they are performed manually.
Skilled artisans will appreciate that elements in the figures are illustrated for simplicity and clarity and have not necessarily been drawn to scale. For example, the dimensions of some of the elements in the figures may be exaggerated relative to other elements to help to improve understanding of embodiments of the present invention.